MacOS – Media keys behaving like function keys

keyboardmacos

I'm experiencing some frustrating keyboard issues on my new 2014 Macbook Air (OS X 10.9.3)

When using the laptop keyboard, the F1–12 keys take the behavior of "function" as opposed to the "media key" behavior they should have by default (brightness, volume, etc).

I've unchecked the "Use all F1-F12 keys as standard function keys" setting in System Preferences. I've also tried a few things in the terminal:

  • defaults write "Apple Global Domain" "com.apple.keyboard.fnState" "0" (referenced here)
  • defaults write -g com.apple.keyboard.fnState -bool true (referenced here)

I restart after each of these and still nothing.

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A couple things to note:

  • When I connect an Apple Keyboard, the keys on the Apple Keyboard work as normal.
  • I recently connected a Kinesis Freestyle 2 keyboard to the laptop. I have a feeling this may have caused the issue, possibly because it was a Windows version of the keyboard as opposed to a Mac version (Oh Windows, always causing trouble…)

Any ideas? Thanks.

Best Answer

Ugh. I hate when the solution is "it just stopped happening all of a sudden"... but a firmware update came out and I installed it, and now my keys back! Yay =D

If I learn anything about what exactly happened here I'll post my findings.

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